Cable Tidying Guide

Comments 1 to 25 of 36

Hmm... not what I'd have expected from the title. But it gives ideas, which is good. I dunno about the thing which said sleeving was fairly easy to apply (if you have the right tools, yes, or if you use something too large or super-expandible, but it's 99% of the time a pita to sleeve a PSU), but the end result is easily superior to any of the other solutions.

imo the split loom is only good for external stuff. it's too bulky to use in PCs considering how available sleeving is, but it's superb for doing the behind-the-desk mess. there are these useful little reusable clamp things also (most Lian Li's include one or two), good for internal stuff but superb again for behind-the-desk wiring.

You can also buy it in B&Q, Homebase etc. in the electrical department - although generally only available in black. I agree, though, that it's only really useful for cleaning up the behind-the-desk spaghetti.

I agree with Firehed - I was expecting the article to be more of a "how to tidy up your wiring" rather than a "this is what you can cover your wires in" article.

I liked it, Bindi. Leave it to you to put the force of entropy in a wiring article. ;) Nice job with the overview.

As for the idea of "I expected to see how you apply these," some finished cases may not have been a bad idea...maybe browse the project logs and pick up some reference pics of jobs well done. Aside from that, maybe some actual links on the article as to where to get some of the things, and it would be a perfect article IMHO.

Oh, and sleeving a PSU might deserve a mention of what a PITA it is when you consider often having to remove the molex connectors. :) Because really....it's a pain.

You kinda forgot to mention in the article how useful Velcro wraps are for managing huge bundles of wires that just need to be directed; Server room cable management would be a nightmare without them :o

Originally Posted by RotoSequenceYou kinda forgot to mention in the article how useful Velcro wraps are for managing huge bundles of wires that just need to be directed; Server room cable management would be a nightmare without them :o

Yea, but technically i could have been there FOREVER listing all the different applications.

I liked this article. Made me want to apply split loom to something ;)

Unfortunately the most annoying wire for me is outside the case and it's the 4m-long headphone lead, which is great when you want to be over the other side of the room without strangling yourself, but is really bad when there's a messy knot of wire on the floor that gets involved with your chair. What is needed is a retractable spool of wire like a tapemeasure, but I don't know if those exist...

ok.... when sleeving cables. put the ends of the cables inside a plastic sandwich bag, with a lil tape around it, then feed it through. that way they go through dead easy, instead of catching on the braid.

sounds simple, but damn, it works like a charm and makes it easy as heck to get the cables through. i did see somewhere a way of bending the atx plug back with the cables around it, but you will have to for it, cause im too lazy to, lol.

nice article, i didnt know what velcro ties were, when i saw the pick i thought they were those fluffy hair-band things ;) now i know how to replace the cableties up the leg of my desk, lol.

You maybe aren't aware of this yet, but take a look at a lot of past posts and you'll see what I mean. One pound==one dollar over there, and very often. They have import duties that seem to raise the price of things quite considerably...it's unfortunate, but true. The British get horribly discriminated against price-wise.

OK, so the official conversion rate is USD$1.80 to GBP£1.00 but because of economies of scale (the US is like 5 times the population of Britain), shipping costs, local taxes (VAT is 17.5% on everything) etc it means that often when you ignore the currency, the numbers are very similar. Hence $1 = £1.

Overall, Britain is a very expensive country to live in, and most of the US is relatively cheap. So if you're talking about a sheet of plywood from Home Depot, that might cost 5 bucks but be more like 5 quid in England.

hmm well its a decent start to an article but its not really a worth while article if there isnt any before and after shots, or at the very least real life examples inside a case

oh and that comments about velcro in network rooms... I had to replace several swicthes in one day.... total time was like 14 hours of nonstop unvelcroing, unplugging, replugging, and revelcroing ( not even gonna talk about the fun of replacing the actual 100 lbs+ behemoths)

I recently startedworking on a "new" method of sleeving cables: I bought a long narrow spring from the hardware store and have been experimenting with that. It is will probably be as much of a pain as braided sleeving to install, but the shiny coiled steel sure does look pretty. I've found that you can run a piece of metal coat hanger wire down the center to keep the spring from continually trying to straighten itself out. This also lets you bend the whole thing into nice shapes and it will stay that way. I'm still working on a way to make the ends look nice though. I woudn't put so much effort into it (it really is a pain to work with), except that it would look absolutely BEAUTIFUL in a chrome-themed case. Similar to the shower hose in Orac 3.